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[MrBones]

The following is a crosspost from IndieDB. It has not been authorized yet, but I still thought I'd post it here

Hey everyone! First off, I'd like to thank all of you for following the project. Today I'm going to have an extremely in depth post about the current progress of Double Death. I've been silent for a little bit, and I'm very sorry about that! I've been doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes, and I wanted to make sure I had a ton of stuff to show before I made a new post. I'm going to break it down into categories, that way you can skip around to whatever you want to read without having to go through a giant wall of text.

Weapons
The main thing I've been working on is weapons. Since you've last seen the game, I've updated it to include 9 different weapons, which is close to 200 new animations. Because of the many new guns that have been implemented, I've also gone ahead and added new features to suit some of these guns. I thought it'd be a cool idea to go ahead and detail each individual weapon, so I'll be doing that. I've had to resize a few images here, so I'm sorry if there's any quality loss.


Shotgun
The classic weapon I'm sure you've all seen before, as it was the first one implemented in the game.
Nothing really new has been added to this weapon, except I've changed the amount of max
ammo and I've also increased the amount of damage significantly. The weapon is cheap and powerful,
but is not efficient compared to other guns. You can melee with this weapon.




AK47
This gun has a high fire rate and does good damage. It can hold quite a bit of ammo, and is
very efficient for holding out in extended periods of time. You can also melee with this weapon, making it one of the most efficient weapons in the game, and a personal favorite of some of the developers. Design wise, I wanted to make a weapon that was balanced all around. It may seem a bit expensive compared to other weapons, but it is well worth it.




Axe
The axe is a well priced melee weapon made with one thing in mind: efficiency. It comes at a cheap
price, and will do good amounts of damage. When compared to the combat knife, the axe has a much
more reliable damage range, albeit lower overall.



Dual Pistols
My personal favorite weapon in the game, the dual pistols are extremely well rounded weapons.
They have an amazing fire rate and decent reload time. They do the same amount of damage as
the pistol, but since the fire rate is doubled, you can imagine how fun it is to fire. It has twice the ammo
of the pistol as well. It runs out of ammo somewhat quicker than some other weapons, but is just as efficient as the AK47 for holding out in most cases. You can melee with this weapon.



Minigun
Ah yes, the minigun. I've been playing around with this thing a lot in test matches, and I've developed
a love-hate relationship in the best way. The minigun is extremely situational, and is best for taking
down overly tanky enemies quickly. It has extremely high damage and a high fire rate, but runs out of ammo at a rate higher than pretty much any gun in the game. Granted, it also has one of the highest ammo pools in the game as well. It's an expensive weapon, but with mods, this thing has plow down entire fields.



Combat Knife
The combat knife, alongside the axe, is a balanced melee only weapon made for tight occasions when
either guns are too much of a hassle or ammo is scarce. In comparison to the trusty old fire axe, the combat knife is slightly more expensive. It has a wider damage range, and a more linear hitbox. You start with this weapon by default in Arcade mode.



Pistol
The pistol is a weapon with low damage and a high fire rate. It reloads quick and is efficient for fast paced fighting. It works very well in earlier rounds, but begins to fall off as the game progresses. You will find that this weapon is much better in easier difficulties. You can also melee with it. It is the starting weapon by default in the Classic and Endless modes.



Riot Shield
The Riot Shield is an interesting weapon. It's a great support weapon, but is very situational for the most part. It blocks directional damage, which includes pretty much all sources of damage except for certain things like explosions or earthquakes. Damage wise, it's somewhat low. This weapon is best used either for fun or in multiplayer, where it can be used to strategically.



Sniper Rifle
God, I really love this thing. It has the highest single bullet damage output in the game by default, and is amazing for taking out almost anything, including bosses. The problem is that it takes forever to reload. It can carry a decent amount of ammo. The real reason to get this thing is for the scoping ability, which is a unique ability activated by the right mouse that allows you to shoot to almost anywhere on the map. It's great to play around with, and is fantastic if you are in a team with someone to protect you.




Those are all of the weapons that will be available for release. Each weapon will be able to equip up to (3) weapon modifications, which can be bought at the trader. Weapon mods can do simple stuff like increase damage, increase how much ammo can be carried,and increase fire rate. However, they can also have crazy effects like chain lightning, fire, explosions, and more! This is currently in progress, and I'll update with another development post when I'm ready to share more about this.

Backpack & Item Changes

Since you've last seen the backpack menu, a bit has changed. The first thing you'll notice is that there's
two more weapon slots to the left. This allows you to hold up to 3 weapons (2 in the backpack and 1 in your hand) with a backpack equipped. To swap the carried weapon, you simply click the one you want to switch. You simply hold the assigned inventory key to access the BP (tab by default). You'll also notice the medkits to the right. You can left click a medkit to use it on yourself, which will heal you 3 times over about 3 seconds, or right click to throw a medkit on the ground for a team mate. Backpacks can still be thrown on the ground for team mates independently of medkits.


Trader Changes

While the trader is not actually finished yet, this should give you a good idea of what's going on. At the top you will see the weapon selection. Below that is the item bar, where you can buy ammo and medkits. To the right of the ammo and medkits, that strange looking black box with the < and > buttons stacked next to it is a work in progress. When it is finished, it will allow you to buy mods for your weapons. I also have plans to add the trader countdown along with current cash at the bottom of the screen, and weapon slots below the item bar to show what weapons/mods you currently have. I also plan to let players sell currently equipped mods and weapons by clicking on the these slots. In the next development post, I will detail this more once the trader is finished.

Misc UI and Game Changes
The UI has been updated vastly since the last post, with a button overhaul and a new stylized pop up window (not shown).

New Icons for Ammo Boxes and Medkits (partially shown in the trader pic).

My favorite feature, I have added text based damage counters to enemies and players. If a player is healed, the text will be green.


Other Changes / Being Worked On
I am currently attempting to improve the AI vastly, and also improve it a bit for harder difficulties instead of the zombies just becoming huge bullet sponges with bigger damage ranges. More information on this soon.
Random Ammo/Medkit drops are being added. They spawn in set positions at random intervals.

What Still Needs to Be Done?
I've had a few people ask me what still needs to be done before the game is released. As you can see a lot of stuff is either done or being worked on, but besides the stuff above here's a list of features that need to be finalized.

Multiplayer (60% Done, need to update to keep up with newest features)
Modding / Mod Support (30% Done)
Steam Integration (Including Workshop!) (10% Done)
I'd like to redo all the maps in the game, as I don't feel like they are amazing right now (?% Done, it's subjective)
Finish Up Arcade Mode (30% Done)
Testing + Bugfixes/Final Polish

Other Stuff
After the trader is finished the AI is cleaned up a bit, I plan to launch a trailer and a demo! This is very exciting as it should DEFINITELY BE BY THIS JUNE. I know I am terrible with dates, but this is a fact. The game's full release date is the END OF THIS SUMMER. While I had announced a Kickstarter in the past, I am actually thinking I might not need one, as I don't want to start a Kickstarter just for publicity if I don't need to. The Greenlight campaign will launch alongside the trailer and demo, maybe +1/2 weeks to take some screenshots. I will make sure to post a ton once the time comes, so keep updated guys! I really appreciate all your support.

[MrBones]

Cool little transition thing I added in Arcade Mode.

[Join Indies]

Nice work. I'm liking the gatling gun.

[MrBones]

Nice work. I'm liking the gatling gun.

Thanks mate!

[MrBones]

Crosspost from IndieDB.

Just a small feature I added, whenever a new song starts playing a message box will fade in with the song's name and artist for about a second or two before fading out. You can turn this off in the options menu.

[blekdar]

I like that idea. I remember when the Tony Hawk games did that and it was always a great way to find new songs.

[MrBones]

I like that idea. I remember when the Tony Hawk games did that and it was always a great way to find new songs.

Wow, I didn't even remember that Tony Hawk games did that. I thought this would also be a good idea because the game supports custom music, so it'll be easier to identify songs added through mods or servers.

[blekdar]

I agree, that IS also a good idea.

[MrBones]

Finished the Trader screen.

[aamatniekss]

The trader screen looks really weird. The font is almost undreadable. I think it doesn't do justice to how awesome the rest of the game looks. You should probably stick to a little more pixelated style.

[MrBones]

The trader screen looks really weird. The font is almost undreadable. I think it doesn't do justice to how awesome the rest of the game looks. You should probably stick to a little more pixelated style.

Hey mate.

Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately, I'm too late into the first practical release build (and the budget) of the game to completely redo it. The most I can do is get a different font (which might help). However, this is the same font used for the rest of the menus, so I don't want to break the style. I realize that the Trader looks a bit different than the rest of the game, but I think it has its charms.

I'm sorry to hear that you don't like it. I think it's possible that maybe it's a bit unreadable because of the scaled resolution here. I'm open for suggestions if you have any small fixes that you think would improve it though.

[MrBones]

I've began to rework the trader a bit based on feedback. One of the things I've done (not just for the trader but across the game as a whole) is variate between 2 different fonts instead of using different sizes of the same one. Both are based off the same font family, so they don't clash too much in my opinion. The new font shown here is mainly used for pop ups and smaller text, while the block font is used for headers, sub-headers, and such. I've also gone ahead and centered some of the text that looked a bit off.

[MrBones]

here's a small preview of what i've been working on
in depth on weapon add-ons coming soon

[MrBones]

testing the not so elusive chain lightning weapon mod moments before my untimely death

also updated the OP in anticipation for something later this month...

[MrBones]

i can't wait until saturday to share this so here we go folks



what you're looking at here is poison gas, explosions, and chain lightning. all at once.

[MrBones]

Crosspost from IndieDB:  Link

Hey everyone! First off, if you're reading this, I'd like to thank you for following the project. For today's long past due progress post, I'm going to be talking about a few very important things concerning the game. The first being a good look at what the weapons modification system in all of its glory, and the second being a look at what the hell is taking so long. I'm also going to talk a little bit about some miscellaneous features I'm adding to the game for extra polish. So, without further ado, let's get to it!

Weapon Mods

Weapon mods are exactly what you'd think they'd be. Modifications you can buy from the trader and equip to your weapon to make crazy stuff happen. I've been teasing it for awhile, and I event had an alpha version of it previewed a long time ago. However, I've completely revamped the system. Now it's not just awesome, it's awesome. Before weapon mods just added simple effects. Now they are real game changers. You can equip 3 per weapon, and mods can synergize and inherit the effects of each other.

Explanation - Inheritance and Synergy

So I've been throwing around some fancy words like Inheritance and Synergy without actually explaining how they work. So I'm going to do just that: explain how they work. Inheritance is a cool thing defined per mod. It defines what type of mods are inherited by the effect of this mod. For instance, the "fire" mod can inherit any mods of type "debuff". You can see an example here, with fire inheriting the ice mod to create: FREEZING FIRE.

Each mod has its own type of inheritance. For example, so mods can inherit other mods who are of the same type, such as the chain lightning mod, which can inherit other "effects" mods. This can be seen with the chain lightning mod inheriting the fire mod.

Mods can also inherit more than one mod, and can also inherit mods who have inherited other mods. Does it hurt your brain? It should, haha.

(The Beartrap Mod)

On the other hand, we have synergy. Synergy is a cool way for mods who don't inherit each other to interact. Synergy happens alongside inheritance. For example, acid gas and explosions working together:

I don't want to spoil all the synergies and inheritances, they're way too cool when you discover them yourself.

Game Mods which add Weapon Modifications (2 different types of mods) can define their own synergies and inheritances.

I also don't want to spoil all the mods in the game, so here's a gif of chain lightning, poison gas, and explosions all at once.

Buying more than one of some mods will result in effect multipliers, such as the explosion mod. For example, here's 3x equipped explosions.

I can confirm that there are generic mods such as "add damage" and "add hp", but there also cool things like you've seen so far above. There are a total of 21 Weapon Mods.

Misc Features

Here's some cool features I've recently been working on and a short explanation behind them.

Enemies now leave behind blood behind when they die.

All weapons now have knockback, not just melee weapons. Bullets slightly knockback enemies now.

I've also added a round announcer. The announcer comments on certain stuff between rounds. Yes, you can turn it off. You can also add your own custom announcers through modding. The default announcer is a..pretty well known guy. I'll be revealing who it is soon. I can't believe I've been working with him and it's been a great opportunity.

What The Hell Is Taking So Long?

Double Death became a lot bigger of a project than I thought it'd be. I'm proud of it, but many obstacles have become apparent. I've been keeping a physical checklist (2 to be specific, one for overall progress and one for alpha/beta progress):

Basically, here's the gist of what's left:

• Modding
• Multiplayer
• Balancing
• Bugfixes
• Mapping

I'm still hoping to get the game finished by the end of summer, so keep updated guys! I should have a trailer coming soon as well.

And that's all for now. Thanks for following guys. I'll see you next post!

[MrBones]

Hey everyone! I just wanted to pop in to let everyone know that DD is most certainly not dead or dying any time soon. Basically there was a minor set back which came from how messed up the AI was. I overlooked a massive bug which resulted in a critical memory leak in the game. That lead to one thing, which lead to me realizing the memory leak was actually embedded in some of the game's core rather than the AI itself. I was able to fix it, along with completely redoing the AI, the weapon mod synergy, and a few other small things. Needless to say, it set me back a bit farther than I had hoped for.

Anyway, I wanted to give a post explaining how the AI works for those who are interested in that sort of stuff. It's also an excuse to draw terrible pictures in paint. 

First the AI calculates it's aggro. If you're in singleplayer, it's always you obviously. In Multiplayer however, aggro is initialized as being the nearest player. Then, the aggro will be recalculated to the last hit with the lowest health once other players start attacking the same zombie.



The AI is then given a threshold for movement. Basically, the threshold is a given radius to check in all directions to see if it's aggro target is within range.



If it is within range, it's good to start processing paths. It takes dead reckoned steps in the general direction of the player relative to its own XY coordinates. Then, every few steps it will calculate a path to the player (within the threshold distance) and follow that path for a few steps before going back to dead reckoning. The process then restarts in the cycle of dead reckoning, pathing, reckoning, and so on. This not only gives the zombies a good feel, but prevents the pathfinding AI from creating too many paths and creating lag. Also it's important to note that the AI avoids objects tagged as AVOID. These are basically just solid objects like walls and obstacles.




If the aggro leaves the range, the reckoning cycle switches off until the player comes back into range and instead turns onto a separate pathfinding algorithm using node based pathfinding to go the node nearest to the player. A priority queue is run to generate the node path, and then the AI chops up the path into pieces and then paths to the individual nodes in order, recalculating the path if coming into contact with obstacles.



If the player is in a different room, the AI creates a grid of rooms available on the map and looks for the entrances it needs to go through to be in the same room as the player. It then acts the same way it does towards the player, using nodes until the targeted transition enters the threshold range.



In order to prevent overlap and further prevent lag, Horde AI was implemented. Zombies tend to group up. However, grouping is a lot different than overlapping and becoming one giant sprite. If 2 or more zombies share an AI target and are within specified ranges of each other, a "web" AI is created. While zombies still path individually, a web is created to make sure A) they do not overlap, and B) if paths intersect, they are combined. If the player is not within a threshold, the zombies will sometimes share paths with each other, only recalculating the path if bumping into either an object marked AVOID or another zombies.



Hope you enjoyed my artistic masterpieces and explanation. I'll be back with more actual gameplay screenshots and stuff soon.

[MrBones]

ADDED SOME EXTRA JUICE, GAME WASN'T JUICY ENOUGH

PARTICLE EXPLOSIONS, SCREENSHAKE, GUN KICKBACK & MORE BLOOD

[The_Otherworld_Agency]

Haha! Killing it, dude! 

[MrBones]

Haha! Killing it, dude! 

Thanks man!